FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating communication and mobile communication network usage billing mechanisms between a User Equipment 110 of a mobile subscriber and Internet Service Provider (ISP) server 130 in the conventional technology.
As shown in FIG. 1, when there is a plurality of mobile communication networks available for the User Equipment 110, the User Equipment 110 selects a certain mobile communication network to connect to the ISP server 130.
After completing the use of the Internet service provided by the ISP server 130, the fee of using the mobile communication network for the corresponding service is charged to the owner of the User Equipment 110 and in most cases the owner is an individual. In the case that the owner is an organization such as company, the usage fee is charged to the organization.
In this case, the mobile communication network usage fee is calculated based on the traffic amount flown exchanged through the mobile communication network in most but, sometimes, based on the mobile communication network usage time, service type (e.g. real time service such as voice and video).
In order to support Internet service, the metering of the traffic amount and time and checking the service type is performed by the mobile communication network termination devices such as gateways.
As shown in FIG. 1, the mobile communication networks have respective gateways 120 and 160 at their boundaries in view of the mobile communication network. For example, Long Term Evolution (LTE) as the fourth generation mobile communication standard of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is provided with a PDN Gateway (PGW) 140.
The billing information collected by the gateway devices such as PGW 140 is transferred to a billing server such as Authentication Authorization Account server (AAA) 150 which calculates the fee to be charged and charges the finally determined to the owner of the User Equipment.